One of the old saws we hear from those who wish to impose more stringent regulations on advertising or product placement is that “it’s for the children.”  That is, critics such at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and other organzations fear that, because children’s brains are less developed or they have not yet learned to differentiate commercial appeals from other types of information flows, kids may be more susceptible to persuasive commercial messaging. I think there’s some truth to that, but I also believe that (a) kids aren’t quite the sheep we make them out to be, (b) the potential “harm” here is not as great as the critics make it out to be and (c) parental supervision should be the primary the solution to the problem.

But let’s ask a different question entirely: Are we willing to forgo additional, and potentially more diverse, forms of children’s programming simply because we want to keep commercial messaging or product placement away from kids?   Consider the case study of The Hub, recently featured in The New York Times:

With imports of European cartoons, a smattering of Hasbro ads and a rerun of the movie “Garfield,” Hasbro and Discovery Communications unveiled a new television brand for children on Sunday, called The Hub. Over time, the two companies hope to prove that there is room for a fourth player alongside Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and the Cartoon Network, the three heavyweights of children’s TV, said David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications.  […]

The Hub is a significant retooling of Discovery Kids, a channel available in about 60 million homes that had withered within the portfolio of Discovery Communications… . Discovery Kids came onto television after Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, and it never found a competitive footing. It earned less than 10 cents per subscriber from cable and satellite companies, and most of its ads were of the low-rent direct-response variety. “We were really lying in wait,” said Mr. Zaslav, who determined that he needed a business partner in the children’s market, and last year found an eager one in Hasbro, which paid $300 million for a 50 percent stake in the channel.

As with most media programming decisions, a trade-off is at work here: To ensure diverse new shows or channels can be sustained, programmers must find revenue streams to sustain them.  When direct subscription fees or other advertising methods prove unsustainable, the only remaining option is product sponsorship or some form of underwriting (unless we assume government funding for all children’s programming is an option, which is neither likely nor desirable).

Thus, the cost-benefit calculus comes down to the choice between a new kids’ channel that  includes product promotion, or no programming at all. For some of us, this is an easy call: Diversity and choice should trump concerns about the supposed evils of “commercialism.”  Restricting advertising in the name of “protecting children,” while well-intentioned, would limit cultural diversity and viewer choice and should, therefore, be rejected.

Of course, I feel passionately about that because I do not find the counter-argument convincing. Namely, I don’t think the critics make a good case that a serious “harm” exists from exposure to commercial messages or product placement.  Hell, I can’t even count how many G.I. Joe-related product placement things I grew up consuming; I was obsessed with the stuff.  But so what?  Was I somehow irreparably harmed by it?  And how about those endless Star Wars-related product placements? How were kids harmed by that?  Because they begged Mom and Dad to buy more Star Wars toys?  I could go on with countless examples, but you get the point.

Regardless, the point I am making above is a very different one:  As a parent, would you rather have an additional option like The Hub, even if it includes some product placement / promotion, or would you rather not have an additional choice at all?  Seems like a simple choice to me.  And we should all be free to make it for ourselves and our families.

In late June, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened a Notice of Inquiry and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding “Sponsorship Identification Rules and Embedded Advertising” (MB Docket No. 08-90). Basically, it’s an inquiry into the product placement and embedded advertising practices on television. Some at the FCC want such practices regulated.

PFF filed comments in the matter today. Ken Ferree and I argue that that FCC regulation of such advertising practices would be unnecessary and unwise. “If the Notice demonstrates anything,” we argue, “it is that a majority of the current Commissioners live in a world wholly alien and unfamiliar to most Americans; indeed, a world long forgotten if it ever existed.” We continue:

The Notice alludes menacingly to new, “subtle and sophisticated means” of commercial messaging, to “sneaky commercials” (quoting a senescent order topped with nearly fifty-years of dust) and to “vindicat[ing]” the policy goals of the Communications Act – as if the FCC must exact vengeance on those who would try – horror of horrors – to sell goods and services to the American public. The melodramatic tone of the Notice is intended, of course, to set the stage for the Commission’s latest effort to micromanage the free marketplace of ideas, i.e., the media. Only by portraying “embedded” advertising as something new and nefarious can the Commission hope to justify a new portfolio of intrusive and burdensome speech regulations in the name of preserving the “public’s right to know who is paying to air commercials or other program matter on broadcast television and radio and cable.”

And, as we make clear in the filing, we don’t buy the argument that the public are nothing more than mindless sheep:

Motivating the effort to expand the FCC’s regulation of private speech is a view that the Commission must protect the public from “stealth advertising” and “secret” advertisements that “prey upon unsuspecting minds.” One would think that before such loaded and sinister characterizations were used, the Commission might demand some evidence that the public is both 1) unaware of the commercial nature of product placements or other embedded advertisements and 2) that some positive harm flows directly from any such lack of awareness. In fact, however, there can be little doubt but that viewers and listeners understand that when “American Idol” judges drink from Coca Cola cups, promotional consideration was exchanged; when a radio host talks about the great dinner he ate at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, the restaurant is a sponsor of the show; when contestants on “The Biggest Loser” are taught how to make desserts with “Jell-O” gelatin, the association is not serendipitous. When brand names are used in program material, the public generally understands that some form of commercial sponsorship is involved. Indeed, it is hard even to imagine that the American public could be as ignorant or naïve as a majority of the Commission appears to believe they are.

Indeed, we argued, “With respect to embedded commercial material, the Internet has spawned a variety of instantaneous feedback mechanisms allowing average Americans to serve as media watchdogs, policing product placement and taking steps to point out when placements have become excessive, or even silly.” For example, product placement and brand promotion in movies and television is now closely monitored by a wide variety of websites, such as BrandSpotters.com and BrandChannel.com. Also see the “Product Placement” entry at Wikipedia. Thus:

the “harm” posited by the Notice is an imaginative fiction – a fiction driven entirely by the paternalistic view that an enlightened few, who happen to be ensconced on the 8th floor of a federal building in Southwest D.C., see the truth while the public at large is made up of mindless sheep being duped at every turn by advertisers. In fact, of course, those who hold this view are themselves victims of the so-called “third-person effect”: “People tend to think that other people are fooled by what they themselves understand perfectly.” [quoting W. Phillips Davison, 1983] A rich literature exists on the myriad ways in which the third-person effect has predicated calls for speech controls and media regulation.

But what’s the harm, a skeptic might ask, in a little more FCC regulation here? It’s three-fold: (1) It’s another blow to First Amendment rights. (2) It unfairly singles out the already over-regulated broadcast media sector relative to its many unregulated competitors. (3) It could have a detrimental economic impact on the health of that struggling sector, which relies entirely on advertising to maintain its “free” content offerings. As we go on to conclude in our filing:

Ironically, the “remedies” suggested in the Notice not only are unnecessary, overbroad, and over-burdensome given the absolute paucity of evidence that embedded advertisements pose any kind of risk or harm to the public, they would in fact have a deleterious effect on the health of free media in America. As a result of the rapid introduction and growth of new media outlets, traditional media operators, and particularly free broadcast media, are struggling to remain relevant and profitable. An era of media abundance for consumers is an era of hyper-competition for suppliers; traditional media operators and their business models are under enormous strain. Yet the burdensome disclosure regulations posited in the Notice are targeted directly at traditional media platforms, while new media outlets over which the FCC has little or no authority would remain free to sell advertising in whatever form they choose. Not only would such an approach be inequitable, it would sap the very lifeblood of free, traditional media – commercial advertising. At a time when VCRs, DVD players, digital video recorders, video on demand, video on the Internet are making stand-alone commercial spots obsolete, embedded advertisements and product sponsorship may become the only methods of continued support for free, over-the-air broadcasting. Further, enhanced government regulation of speech on traditional platforms will only serve to accelerate the migration of program content to new, unregulated platforms. In this case, therefore, the proposed remedies are worse than the purported disease. In the name of protecting consumers from “hidden” advertisements, the FCC is contemplating rules that likely would destroy the financial health and well-being of the free broadcast medium and unfairly handicap cable services vis-à-vis new media platforms. Indeed, because of the steady progress of media technology, the very rationale for FCC content regulation of broadcast and cable programming has become superannuated. Advertisers and consumers have moved on and are adapting to the 21st Century media marketplace — the Commission should, too.

Our filing can be downloaded from the PFF webpage here and I have embedded the filing below in a Scribd reader if you care to take a quick look:

Last month I posted a tongue-and-cheek piece thanking policymakers for taking steps to save us from loud TV ads and product placements. The whole thing just strikes me as the height of absurdity; it’s a stupid way for regulators to spend their time and it’s a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. Backers of such regulations assume that we in the public are little more than ignorant sheep whose minds will be subliminally programmed to want to drink certain colas or drive certain cars just because they saw them in a TV show. Absurd.

The other thing that kills me about this debate is how some people seem to imagine that product placement has somehow come out of nowhere recently and taken over broadcast TV and radio to an unprecedented extent. That’s either revisionist history or ignorance of it. The fact is, broadcasting has been filled with product placement for years. Media guru Jack Myers points this out in a good piece on the issue this week:

Those old enough to recall the early days of television news recall that Camel cigarettes and Timex sponsored the NBC News with John Cameron Swayze. On-set signage was prominent. Local radio personalities have always used their relationships with consumers to advance their sponsors’ interests.

But it goes way beyond that. For God’s sake, has everyone forgotten about the “Texaco Star Theater“? It was the top-rated show of the 1950s, pulling in a stunning 61.6 rating in 1950-51 alone. How did the show begin? Here’s how the Wikipedia entry describes it:

On television, continuing a practice long established in radio, Texaco included its brand name in the show title. When the television version launched, Texaco also made sure its employees were featured prominently throughout the hour, usually appearing as smiling “guardian angels” performing good deeds of one or another kind, and a quartet of Texaco singers opened each week’s show with the following theme song:

“Oh, we’re the men of Texaco We work from Maine to Mexico There’s nothing like this Texaco of ours! Our show is very powerful We’ll wow you with an hour full Of howls from a shower full of stars. We’re the merry Texaco men Tonight we may be showmen Tomorrow we’ll be servicing your cars! We wipe your pipe We pump your gas We jack your back We scrub your glass So join the ranks of those who know And fill your tanks with Texaco Sky Chief, fill up with Sky Chief You’ll find that Texaco’s the finest friend your car has ever had …And now, ladies and gentlemen… America’s number one television star… MILTON BERLE!…”

Jeez, how in the world did America ever survive this shameless product placement / corporate sponsorship?!? Why didn’t the FCC put an end to that before our fragile little minds were corrupted beyond repair and we all marched down to Texaco stations to guzzle up gas! [Moreover, I’m surprised the agency didn’t fine the show for what were clearly subliminal sexual innuendos like: “We wipe your pipe / We pump your gas / We jack your back / We scrub your glass.” !!!]

Anyway, Jack Myers also makes two other important points in his essay. First, there are First Amendment issues in play here. Many of the “media watchdog groups [who complain about such ads]…. would love nothing more than to quash the First Amendment for their own political agenda,” he notes. Second, there are economic issues in play as well:

many journalists recognize and appreciate the fact that advertisers help pay their salaries and softness in the newspaper ad market is causing massive layoffs of journalists. Unless the TV industry identifies innovative new business models, local TV reporters will suffer the same fate. Unless the TV industry is permitted to stretch some boundaries in this new media environment, local TV news will quickly follow newspapers into the economic doldrums.

Therefore, he concludes, “Fundamentally, if our government wants to ensure the media industry’s economic vitality and secure first amendment freedom of the press rights, it should keep its nose and political affairs out of the ad business.” Amen to that.